The defense says the Crown abruptly dropped the case against Melissa Sheridan in a murder-for-hire plot against her husband because the co-accused’s allegations were not credible
A high-profile murder case in the area came to an abrupt end yesterday after the Crown prosecutor dropped the case, saying there was no reasonable possibility of a conviction.
Melissa Sheridan was charged with first-degree murder in the death of her husband, Brant, on October 19, 2020.
Brant’s brother, Kerry, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in May, saying he conspired with Sheridan – with whom he allegedly had a sexual relationship – to kill his brother.
Sheridan’s lawyer, Michael Lacey, said the defense was questioning the Crown’s only witness, Kerry Burke, on Tuesday when court broke for lunch.
When they returned, Assistant District Attorney Stephanie Baker abruptly announced that the case was being dismissed because there was no possibility of a conviction.
Burke is not credible
Lacey said Carrie Burke made up the whole story about conspiring with Sheridan to kill her husband, his brother.
“Kerry Burke falsely implicated Melissa in the murder to try to shift the blame and responsibility for his own horrific and cowardly act of killing his brother by shooting him twice in the back while they were hunting,” Lacey said in an email to Sudbury.com. “His claims that he was asked or hired to do this by my client were patently unbelievable. He gave false statements to the police about his own involvement in the murder and lied to his family and friends.
“When it became clear that the police were going to discover the truth about what he had done, he had to try and make up some kind of story to explain the inexplicable.”
Lacy added that he believed police should have known Burke’s story from the beginning because he was “not a reliable person.”
“The fact that the police were initially deceived by him to the point of arresting my client, charging her with murder and throwing her in jail until we secured her release is inexplicable,” said Lacey, who incidentally is the same attorney who defended Gerry Lougheed in the 2016 by-election scandal.
“Any objective assessment of his claims should have made the police aware that the Crown did yesterday. Kerry Burke is not a trustworthy person. You can’t believe anything he says. His story is nonsense and he alone is responsible for killing his brother.
He said the Crown’s decision to drop the case was a clear rehabilitation for his client.
“My client has been waiting 18 long months to be rehabilitated. She was vilified in the media and held guilty in the public eye,” Lacey said. “We hope that the truth reflected in the withdrawal of charges will now be told.”
The murder
During the trial in May, the court heard that Brant Burke was found dead, face down on top of a .308 caliber rifle with two gunshot wounds to his body, one to the upper left side of his back and the other to the back of his left shoulder . The Burke brothers were moose hunting on a trail in the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, near Killarney.
Kerry Burke claims he had sex twice with Sheridan before she asked him to “get rid of the problem” — the “problem” being her husband — and promised him ownership of the home she owns with her husband and 10,000 dollars in return.
In the statement of facts, Kerry said he was “blown away” by the request.
About a month later, Carey and Sheridan had sex again and that’s when he agreed to kill his brother, the court heard.
When he was arrested, Carey told police he used a .30-06 caliber rifle that Sheridan had given him.
Carey said that after he shot and killed his brother, Sheridan took that rifle and that he no longer had it.
For months, Carey had considered killing his brother, the court heard, and the decision to do so came on October 19, 2020, when they were moose hunting. Around 9 a.m., as they were walking down a path, with Brant in front of Carey, Carey shot his brother in the back. The first shot was from the thigh and then he fired a second shot to “finish him off”, the court was told.
After Carey’s arrest, police seized several firearms from his home, but they were ruled out as the gun that fired the shell casing found at the scene.
A provincial police dive team searched waterways under bridges along Highway 637 near the scene of the killing on May 24, 2021. Divers found a .308 caliber bolt-action rifle with a scope attached that matched the description provided by Carey. It has been sent to the Forensic Science Center for analysis. It cannot be ruled out as the rifle used to fire the bulletproof vest seized by police at the crime scene, but cannot be definitively confirmed as the murder weapon.
After her arrest, Sheridan was held in custody for more than a month before being released on bail conditions Lacey called “the most restrictive bail order you can imagine”.
As part of his release, Sheridan was required to live with one of his four sureties, not change his address without a further court order and deposit his passport with the Ontario Provincial Police within 24 hours of his release.
She was also required to remain in her residence at all times except in the immediate presence of one or more of her guarantors or in medical emergencies requiring transportation to a hospital. She is prohibited from communicating directly or indirectly with a list of 13 people, as well as possessing any weapons or ammunition
In addition, Sheridan was required to have a working landline telephone in her residence and, when alone in her residence, to answer the telephone immediately if it rang. Within 24 hours of release and at her own expense, she must be fitted with a GPS monitoring device and wear it at all times. She was not to be within 50 meters of two members of the Burke family.
Melanie Burke, Brant Brant’s oldest daughter, told Sudbury.com in May that it was “beyond disappointing” to see her uncle Kerry Burke plead guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder after initially was charged with first degree murder.
Sheridan is quite famous in the region. Since 2001, she has been president of CRCS Recreation in Sudbury, a firm that provides professional playground consulting and park design services. The company has built hundreds of playgrounds, splash pads, sports facilities and park furniture throughout Northern Ontario.
In 2017, Sheridan received a 40 Under Forty Award from Northern Ontario Business. In addition to CRCS Recreation, she was the Northern Ontario representative agency for Miracle Recreation and Little Tikes Commercial. In addition, Sheridan was a park leader at Kivi Park, serving as a liaison to non-profit organizations for event planning and execution, working with donors and sponsors to continually expand the park’s athletic facilities and beautification efforts, and acting as a spokesperson for Kivi Park .
Kerry Burke
Kerry Burke, for his part, was due to be sentenced on July 25, but that has now been postponed to October 26, pending the completion of Gladu’s report.
“It is my understanding that the Gladue report has had some delay due to blocking and other issues with it,” Judge Erin Cullen said in court last Tuesday.
The court worked to ensure that “all necessary parties were consulted by the authors of the report and had the opportunity to provide information.”
Gladue’s reports provide information about Indigenous ancestry for the court to consider before sentencing and may include suggestions for an appropriate sentence. They are usually 25 pages or more and take between six to eight weeks to prepare.
Burke’s Gladue report was ordered on May 10, which was almost 11 weeks ago.
Defense attorney Glenn Sandberg confirmed that Gladue’s report was important because of the seriousness of the allegations, which Cullen agreed with.
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